'69 Firebird: Metal Mania

Normally if someone mentions Ferrari, Pontiac, and custom bodywork in the same sentence, we’ll run away before we have to see another Craigslist ad for one of those Ferrari-bodied third-gen abominations. Look it up -- no, wait, don’t. But don’t run away, either, because while Sid Tracy’s ’69 Firebird is indeed a modified F-body inspired by Italian supercars, he and builder Troy Gudgel ended up with a road-ready muscle car that we were happy to spend some time with. The project came to our attention more than a year ago when we saw some bare-metal images at Troy’s Illinois-based shop, BBT Fabrications. We liked what we saw, so we caught up with Troy in Bakersfield, California, during a rest stop on the 2013 Goodguys Texas Road Tour. The BBT crew was driving the finished Firebird on a road trip from northern California to northern Texas, covering more than 1,300 miles, no big deal perhaps to veteran hot rodders, but quite the test for a brand-new build. The ’bird covered the distance without complaint, and Troy had plenty of time to gauge the reaction to his pewter Pontiac.

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“I wasn’t sure how people would respond to some of the changes we made,” he said. “The modifications to the nose, the Challenger headlights, the ground effects, we weren’t sure those would go over well with Pontiac people, but so far everyone has been really positive. Well, there was one Dodge guy who didn’t like that we used Dodge headlights.”

The nose of the car is certainly striking, with the stock Firebird’s beaky chrome replaced by a flush split grille with modern black egg-crate mesh and the aforementioned ’11 Dodge Challenger headlights. This radical change was the starting point of the build, when owner Sid decided that he disliked the stock ’69 and wanted something really different. “Sid wanted a modern interpretation of the car,” Troy said. “He’s a Corvette guy, likes Italian sports cars but also wanted to maintain the overall feel of an American muscle car.” Sid, Troy, and designer Ben Hermance went back and forth with renderings and phone calls until they’d come up with a lowered, modernized version of the Pontiac that everyone agreed on. Then Troy began to build it, working sheetmetal into a flattened, sleek, chrome-free nose for the Firebird that still reads as “Pontiac” but dramatically changes the feel of the car.

Once the redesigned front end was finished off with a lower valance and chin spoiler, Troy continued the exotic road-race look around the body of the car, with aluminum side skirts and a rear diffuser under a molded-in sheetmetal bumper-less back end and a small lip spoiler integrated into the decklid above. Exhaust tips exit through the rear bodywork to vent the 21⁄2-inch Borla X-pipe. So what exotic mill does that stainless Borla system meet up with? What else for a Corvette guy but an LS3? In this case, a Mast Motorsports-upgraded LS3 boasting 540 hp at 6,700 rpm and 495 lb-ft of torque at 4,800 rpm. That’s plenty to get a 3,600-pound car moving. These days it’s hard to find an F-body without an LS swap and that can make some folks reluctant to go the modern mill route, but when they look this good and there is so much aftermarket support, even die-hard Ram Air IV fans might have to see the logic in making the move.

7/17The ’cage goes through the firewall to tie in with four other points inside the car, all covered with aluminum paneling. The brakes are Baer 14-inch rotors with six-piston calipers all around.

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The Mast mill is 376 ci and is a bit sportier than stock, thanks to a custom-ground cam and spring package. Mast fuel rails and EFI control the engine, and Troy says that the ease of laptop tuning was another check in the LS engine’s favor. “We had to make some changes after we had some driveability issues with the high-elevation drive through Arizona,” he said. “Mast helped, it was easy, and it’s been running great ever since.”

The LS feeds out into a set of Detroit Speed long-tube headers, designed specifically to work with the DSE subframe. It’s not a cheap setup, but it makes a first-gen F-body engine swap easy, and that left Troy with plenty of time to work on the Firebird’s interior, which is where this build shows what BBT Fabrications can do. Beneath the black Italian leather, every panel is hand-formed aluminum, from the dash to the roof skin, which covers a six-point rollcage, fully integrated into the body of the cockpit. We rode in the car and never even realized the cage was there until we looked at the build photos and saw the bars in the A-pillars. “Sid wanted a covered cage like in a Ferrari,” Troy said. “It’s not so much for racing but to stiffen the car and make it safer for the street. He didn’t want to see it though, and it was a challenge to design the interior around it in a way that tucked it all up out of sight.”

Along with covering the cage, shaped aluminum forms the dash, which houses custom-machined gauge clusters done by Jesse Greening at Greening Auto (GreeningAutoCompany.com). The door panels and the handy center console surrounding the Tremec six-speed are also Troy’s metalwork. Why did he go with hand-formed metal when so many builds these days are going with CNC, 3-D printing and composite?

“Honestly, I initially intended to do a lot more carbon fiber on this car,” Troy answered. “The vents and diffusers are fiberglass, and those were going to be carbon, but then Sid liked the look of the black ’glass, so we left it. Then I started mocking up interior pieces in fiberglass and foam, and got about halfway through one panel and was like, ‘I could do this in half the time in metal.’ So it started out being about what I am good at, but then you realize that there’s something cool about a hand-formed metal piece. 3-D printing is awesome, and we’ll see it become the norm as the costs go down, but there will always be a market for the one-off, for handmade.”

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Readers Rank It

Is this car firing on all eight? Here’s the score from a poll of HOT ROD readers, 1 piston is the worst score, 8 is the best.

Overall 7

Stance 7

Engine 7

Exterior 7

Interior 7

Firebirds on the Track

Pontiac’s Trans Am has the racier name, but the Firebird spent plenty of time on track. Starting in 1968, Trans Am Champion Jerry Titus switched from Ford power to Fire power, running Pontiac Firebirds until his fatal accident on track in 1970. Titus’ company TG Racing also built Pontiacs for other teams, including a couple for BFGoodrich, which were wittily named “Tirebirds.”